As I suspected, it was COLD this morning. In the teens even. It was time to break out the SERIOUS thermal underwear. What do I mean by that? I had some Patagonia Capilene 4 bottoms going on. Long ago I found out that if you really want to be warm, take a good hard look at the stuff people in extreme sports or on expeditions wear. There are ways to stay warm AND DRY without bundling up to look like the Michelin Man.

For the most part, church went well. Had a funny moment when all but Kevin left the stage… apparently, we had one more song to do but according to what we had been informed, we were done. I was 3/4 of the way to the back of the theater when I heard “the band has one more song to do”. Um… we do? So - BACK to the stage we went while everyone got a good laugh and we played the last song of the set before Dave came up.

When we started the first song, my kick drum sounded REALLY weak. I thought to myself, “surely they turned on my kick mic as it’s pretty obvious if its off”. When things are working properly (which is becoming a rarity these days unfortunately) I can feel my kick as the stage moves with the beat. Not so the first song or two. My concerns were confirmed when I asked about it later. Not only was my kick mic off, but my snare drum mic also - probably the 2 most important mics for the drums. Sigh. Topping that off, there was a hum coming from two of the channels on the soundboard I use. Unplugging my mics and cables from the affected channels didn’t change anything so I knew the problem wasn’t on my end. I hope that through all this our sound folks are learning more and more about what they do to make these situations occur less in the future or at the least speed up troubleshooting them.

Anyway, I got a chance to visit a different church this evening to listen to another friend of mine play drums there. SHE did a great job. They played a lot of the songs we’ve played in the past but in a bit of a “tamer” style if you will. Sitting in the crowd was nice for a change.